Veteran service a life calling after Vietnam for Beacon's Morea

Daniel Morea served in the army from 1966-1969, served a tour in Vietnam and has spent much of his professional life helping other veterans.
Patrick Oehler, Poughkeepsie Journal

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Daniel Morea holds a portrait of himself taken at Fort Dix, New Jersey in 1966 at his home in Beacon on May 24, 2018. Morea served in the army from 1966-1969 and did one tour of duty in Vietnam. (Photo: Patrick Oehler/Poughkeepsie Journal)Buy Photo

Editor's note: As Memorial Day approaches, the Poughkeepsie Journal is telling the stories of those from the mid-Hudson Valley who served and sacrificed.

As Daniel Morea navigated mine fields in Saigon, he felt nothing.

There was, obviously, a thorough understanding that a lapse in concentration or any misstep could be fatal. But that was life there and then.

“Emotion and fear will overcome you in combat,” the Beacon resident and former U.S. Army Specialist said. “You were taught to be numb. To survive and do your job, you had to be numb to everything.”

After all, Morea's first six months in Vietnam, he said, were especially difficult. His introduction to the war included periods in which his group came under heavy fire, including rocket-propelled grenades fired by the Viet Cong.

He was stationed with the 34th Engineer Battalion at the Phu Loi Base Camp, among a group tasked with helping build roads from Cambodia to Saigon, which is now known as Ho Chi Minh City.

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Daniel Morea pays his respects to the Beacon War Memorial in Beacon on May 24, 2018. Morea served in the army from 1966-1969 and did one tour of duty in Vietnam. (Photo: Patrick Oehler/Poughkeepsie Journal)

Though combat wasn't their priority, the 70-year-old said, “don’t ever think that building a road in war won’t get you shot at.”

Morea chose to enlist in 1966.

The New Jersey native had, at one point in his childhood, considered joining the priesthood or working for a bank. Those ideas faded after high school. Morea found it difficult to get a job because, he said, employers feared an impending Selective Service draft would claim the young men.

“My dad fought in World War II, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t enlist,” he said. Daniel Morea Sr. served in the Army Military Police Corps. “I figured, why wait until I got called on? (John F. Kennedy) was one of my idols and I felt I should do something for the country.”

He began basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and was transferred to Fort Lee in Virginia. He then spent 14 months training at Fort Polk in Louisiana in preparation for deployment to Vietnam.

On April 14, 1968, he arrived in Binh Duong — just north of Saigon. The area, he said, was rife with conflict during the Tet Offensive that year. Morea’s first thought was...

“Like most of the soldiers, I was scared but trying not to show it.”

Daniel Morea, who fought in Vietnam as a member of the U.S. Army

“It’s hot as hell and I’m nervous,” he recalled. “Like most of the soldiers, I was scared but trying not to show it.”

Morea eventually rose to the rank of E5 Specialist.

He lost friends in the war, saw others lose limbs, and his cousin, Michael Colasuonno, was shot in the back and paralyzed. He eventually died in 1984.

Morea never was wounded, but he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, which greatly affected his life after returning to the United States in May 1969.

To this day, there are panicked flashbacks and nightmares, triggered easily by things as innocuous as the smell of diesel. It took years of counseling, and later the help of his wife, Grace, for him to adequately cope with the condition.

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Daniel Morea outside the American Legion/Veterans of Foreign Wars/Marine Corps League building in Beacon on May 24, 2018. Morea served in the army from 1966-1969 and did one tour of duty in Vietnam. (Photo: Patrick Oehler/Poughkeepsie Journal)

His experiences, along with Colosuonno’s passing, were part of Morea's impetus in co-founding the Mid-Hudson Veterans Coalition in 1984, after a move to Beacon two years earlier. The outreach center, which he ran for 10 years, helped provide social work and psychological services to veterans readjusting to civilian life.

Morea now works as deputy director at the City of Yonkers Department of Veteran Services.

“Memorial Day,” he said, “is a day of remembrance for the ones we lost. But I think America should tip its hat to whoever put on the uniform. No matter where they served and in what capacity, they joined as young people and sacrificed a piece of their lives.”